How to undo an iBooks conversion and revert back to iTunes

Here's Kevin Edgecomb's first solution:

Kevin Edgecomb

I'm glad it worked, for those of you who tried it.

Here's the step by step of exactly what I did.

1.) Stopped the bookstoreagent process.

2.) Moved its file to elsewhere (Documents) so it wouldn't start up again on reboot.

3.) Copied the new buried iBooks book storage folder to my Desktop

4.) Opened up iTunes, and added all those books back in from that Desktop copy of the directory

5.) In iTunes, used the Library Manager to copy all those books back into the iTunes directory for storage.

6.) Went back and deleted my Desktop copy of the iBooks storage, and iBooks for Mac, and the books in the new iBooks storage folder.

7.) Crossed my fingers.

8.) Opened up iTunes, saw all my stuff there, synced to my iPad, and was, yea, verily happified.

It worked for me, anyway. You would certainly have to close iTunes and restart it after stopping the bookstoreagent process for Books to return, but you'll also have to add books into iTunes for the Books tab to reappear. Just use File: Add to Library for that. After the tab is back, you can just drag and drop files onto it to add books.

I did have one weird thing happen. A pdf showed up in Music! Strange. But nothing awful happened.

I figure if someday iBooks is all fixed up and works well, they'll have a download of it available, and I'll reinstall it at that point. But I was miffed that there was no warning that the inadequate iBooks would take over all book management from iTunes if you simply opened it. Not cool at all. Irritating, in fact.

Anyway, I'm happy to have helped figure something out that's been helpful to others. Happy weekend!

And here's Andy Epprecht's refinement:

Andy Epprecht

A small refinement or let's say alternative to Kevin's wonderful solution:

1.) Stopped the bookstoreagent process.

2.) Moved its file to elsewhere (Documents) so it wouldn't start up again on reboot.

Now assuming that you want and have organized all your media (music, video, book, pdf, etc.) in your 'iTunes Media' folder:

3) Opened up iTunes, made sure I had checked 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library' in iTunes >Preferences>Advanced

4.) Went to iTunes>File>Library and checked 'Consolidate library' (and all my files (books/pdf's) magically reappeared (got copied back) in my iTunes Media folder (with all tags and so on like they used to be)

5.) Counted to ten.

6.) Restarted iTunes, saw all my stuff still there.

7.) Deleted iBooks for Mac (maybe wise to backup it to some external drive before), and the books in the new iBooks storage folder (that's in:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks)

8.) Synced to my iPad, and was, yea, verily happified.

For whom it helps.

Message was edited by: Andy Epprecht

And if you're having trouble stopping the bookstoreagent process:

The equivalent of Windows's Task Manager on Mac OS X is Activity Monitor. It's usually in the Applications > Utilities folder, but it's even easier to use Spotlight to run it. To use Spotlight, hit Command+Spacebar and start typing "Activity Monitor" in the popup window.

Once you've got Activity Monitor running, type "Book" in the filter field in the upper right-hand corner. That will isolate the list to all processes with "book" in their name. When you see "bookstoreagent", highlight it and press the "X" icon on the top-left of the toolbar. Answer "yes" to the prompts. That will kill the process.

Steven

Stephan/deliSson,

There's no simple way of reinstalling iBooks once you uninstall it. Make sure you have a Time Machine backup of your system!

I simply copied the iBooks app onto an external removable drive, but I'm certain that attempting to restore iBooks from the external drive will not work right off the bat. There are likely some hidden directories (e.g. in Application Support) that were uninstalled by AppCleaner along with the iBooks app in Applications.

This means that uninstalling iBooks may be permanent, or at least until you either restore from a Time Machine backup or reinstall Mavericks. Choose wisely for your needs and skill level.

stevekrischer,

My experience was that both the bookstoreagent and iBooks must be removed entirely from your system for the reversion to work. Just moving them into a different directory didn't work.

I moved bookstoreagent to an external drive and unplugged the drive. I backed up iBooks to the external drive, uninstalled iBooks with AppCleaner, rebooted, and followed steps 3 & 4 in Andy Epprecht's procedure to get my content back into the iTunes Media folder.

stevekrisher:

Use Activity Monitor to see if bookstoreagent is still running. If it is, it's still active on your drive somewhere. Kill the process and delete it again.

Make sure you empty your trash, unplug the external drive, and reboot your system before restarting iTunes.

Good luck!